Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi was surrounded by media after the hearing. By 4:1 vote the San Francisco Ethics Commission decided that suspended Sheriff Mirkarimi had engaged in official misconduct.

Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi was surrounded by media after the hearing. By 4:1 vote the San Francisco Ethics Commission decided that suspended Sheriff Mirkarimi had engaged in official misconduct.

Photo: Sonja Och, The Chronicle

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Nancy Kolman Ventrone, mother of suspended sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, came to support her son.

Nancy Kolman Ventrone, mother of suspended sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, came to support her son.

Photo: Sonja Och, The Chronicle

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The San Francisco Ethics Commission will decide whether to recommend that suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi should keep his job or be forcibly removed from office. San Francisco, Calif. on Thursday, Aug 16, 2012. less

The San Francisco Ethics Commission will decide whether to recommend that suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi should keep his job or be forcibly removed from office. San Francisco, Calif. on Thursday, Aug 16, ... more

Eliana Lopez hugs her husband Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi after the Ethics Commission Hearing in San Francisco, Calif. on Thursday, Aug 16, 2012. The commission ruled ruled that San Francisco's suspended sheriff ... more

Photo: Sonja Och, Associated Press

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Ross MIrkarimi supporters on the steps of City Hall in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday August 16, 2012. The San Francisco Ethics Commission will decide whether to recommend the suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi should keep his job or be forcibly removed from office. less

Ross MIrkarimi supporters on the steps of City Hall in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday August 16, 2012. The San Francisco Ethics Commission will decide whether to recommend the suspended Sheriff Ross ... more

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

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Panel: Mirkarimi engaged in misconduct

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The San Francisco Ethics Commission set the stage for suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi's potential removal from office when it voted 4-1 Thursday to find he engaged in official misconduct stemming from a Dec. 31 argument where he bruised his wife's arm.

Despite the commission's ruling that the majority of the allegations brought by Mayor Ed Lee in the misconduct case had not been proved, its recommendation, while not binding on the Board of Supervisors, was a blow to the sheriff's efforts to keep his job after he was convicted of misdemeanor false imprisonment for the domestic violence incident.

Now Mirkarimi's fate rests with the Board of Supervisors, where at least 9 of 11 votes would be needed to oust him.

"I think the voters would be shocked if we said a public official who had pleaded guilty to false imprisonment was not guilty of official misconduct," Commissioner Paul Renne, who voted with the majority, said near the close of a hearing that lasted more than nine hours.

A criminal court judge had sentenced Mirkarimi in March to three years of probation and ordered him to attend weekly domestic violence intervention classes for batterers.

The commission's chairman, Benedict Hur, was the sole dissenting vote. He warned that a stricter reading of the city's rarely used law giving the mayor power to seek removal of another elected official was needed to prevent future misuse of that authority.

"Given the force of the tool, I think people wanted it interpreted narrowly," Hur said. His vote came even though he had chastised Mirkarimi's conduct on several occasions, saying at one point: "The misconduct in this case, I think, was egregious."

Larger issue

After the vote, Mirkarimi's wife, Eliana Lopez, clasped his hand as they sat in the hearing room swarmed by reporters. Then the two hugged.

"This issue is larger than about Ross Mirkarimi as sheriff or my family; it's actually about, I think, the preservation and the affirmation of what democracy means," Mirkarimi said in the hallway a short while later. "I am very worried that if they can do this to me at the level of unlimited resources that they've been able to demonstrate and exhibit, really at a touch of their own hand, that they can do it to anybody else."

Mirkarimi also said he is "very concerned and troubled that the will of the voters is being undermined."

The mayor, though, said in a statement that the commissioners' decision showed they agreed with him that Mirkarimi's conduct falls below the ethical conduct expected of a sheriff.

"The members of the Ethics Commission have sent a powerful message and a strong case to the Board of Supervisors of why Ross Mirkarimi is unfit to serve the people of San Francisco as sheriff," Lee said.

The commissioners struggled with what voters intended when the City Charter language on official misconduct was amended. After taking public testimony from scores of people, both detractors and supporters of Mirkarimi, the commission deliberated for about three hours. It then rejected four of the six counts the mayor had brought, concluding he had failed to prove that Mirkarimi engaged in dissuading witnesses, threatened to use his power as sheriff against his wife to potentially gain custody of his young son or deliberately deceived law enforcement officials when ordered to turn over his guns after he was arrested for misdemeanor domestic violence battery and two related counts.

Final 2 issues

That left the commissioners to focus their deliberations on whether Mirkarimi physically abused his wife and whether that amounted to official misconduct under a City Charter definition. Mirkarimi's attorneys, David Waggoner and Shepard Kopp, argued that Mirkarimi's actions, while wrong, weren't connected to his duties as sheriff and didn't constitute official misconduct.

Deputy City Attorney Peter Keith, representing the mayor, said that was simply not the case.

"The heart of these charges has always been the sheriff's crime and his conviction and his sentence for these charges and the consequences of that for his office," Keith said near the start of his closing argument to the commission.

But, said Kopp: "The fact of the matter is it has to be recognized that sometimes people make mistakes; they sometimes run afoul of the law. It doesn't necessarily warrant removal, and clearly the facts of this case do not warrant removal."

Once the commissioners made findings of official misconduct, they also debated whether to recommend that he be removed, but adjourned without reaching a decision. Still, a majority found he had committed misconduct.

Domestic violence victim advocates have asserted for months that having someone convicted in connection with violence against his wife as sheriff would have a chilling effect on domestic violence victims coming forward to report abuse.

Family support

Mirkarimi was accompanied to the hearing by his mother and he walked into the hearing room holding hands with his wife. Lopez had been living in her native Venezuela with the couple's 3-year-old son, Theo, since March, when Mirkarimi was suspended. She came back to San Francisco Monday and said she plans to stay.

During a break in the hearing, Mirkarimi, his voice breaking, said he and his family are just starting the process of reuniting.

"A family should never be used as a weapon for political means," he said.

Last month, a judge lifted a restraining order barring him from seeing his wife. The stay-away order was put in place in January after Mirkarimi was arrested for misdemeanor domestic violence battery stemming from a heated argument with his wife on New Year's Eve, while he was still a city supervisor. He sworn in as sheriff on Jan. 8.

The day after the argument Lopez made a tearful video in which she tearfully spoke of her marital problems and displayed the bruise. The neighbor who shot the video called the San Francisco Police Department's domestic violence unit, launching the investigation that put Mirkarimi's job in jeopardy.

Lopez, who said she made the video to possibly use later should she get into a custody dispute with her husband concerning their son, has refused to cooperate with authorities and has stood by Mirkarimi.

"I believe Ross is the best person to be sheriff," she said after the hearing. "I hope for justice. I am shocked to see what happened today, but we are fighters and he's not going to resign. This is wrong. This is not just about him."

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